Steamworks SDK Got An Update to Help Developers Fine-Tune Games for Valve Hardware

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The Steamworks SDK has been updated to version 1.65, and while Steamworks SDK updates aren't usually applicable (or interesting) to end-users, there are a couple of changes in this update that will likely bring improvements down the line for users playing on Valve's hardware lineup.

In short, the SDK update allows developers to detect whether their game is running on Valve hardware, what kind of graphical settings the user is running, whether they are playing via Proton or not, and also select a default graphics configuration depending on what hardware the user has.

It also expands the anonymous framerate data that users can already send to developers with additional information on graphical settings and what resolution the game is running at.

Here is the full changelog for the update:

Steamworks SDK 1.65 Update Changelog:

Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Deck

• Removed ISteamUtils::IsRunningOnSteamDeck(). Please use other feature specific methods below.
• Added ISteamUtils::IsRunningOnSteamHardware() which returns ESteamHardwareType. Use this call for analytics, support or diagnostic purposes. For functional decisions, see other SDK calls.
• Added ISteamUtils::GetSteamHardwareDefaultConfig() to help choose default game settings (video and other) that you have tuned for specific Steam hardware. It also enables changing your default game settings on future Steam hardware without needing to recompile your game.
• Added ISteamUtils::IsRunningUnderProton() to determine if your game is running under the Proton compatibility layer on Linux.
• ISteamUtils contains other pre-existing methods that may be useful when replacing IsRunningOnSteamDeck(), such as ISteamUtils::IsSteamInBigPictureMode() and ISteamUtils::IsSteamRunningInVR().

ISteamApps

• Added SetGamePerformanceSetting() and SetGameRenderResolution() methods so a game can report to Steam servers what the relative performance settings and game resolution are set to for the given user. This data will be included with anonymous framerate data if the user has opted into sharing that.

ISteamUGC - Added options for querying UGC (sorted in descending order)

• k_EUGCQuery_RankedByNumParentItems - how many items depend on this item (if it isn't a collection)
• k_EUGCRankedByNumParentCollections - how many collections contain this item

Steam Input

• Added Switch 2, Steam Controller and Steam Frame Controller action origin enum values

ISteamMatchmakingServers

• Added ISteamMatchmakingServers::ServerFriends() to get a list of friends that have recently played on a specific server
• Added "popularamongfriends" filter option to retrieve a set of servers that the user's friends commonly play on

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